


To toll me back from thee to my sole self

by OhThatJane



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Bees, John Watson POV, M/M, Retirement, Secret love, Sussex, long time no see
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-04
Updated: 2014-08-04
Packaged: 2018-02-11 19:21:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2080113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OhThatJane/pseuds/OhThatJane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Holmes has kept away from Watson for much too long.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To toll me back from thee to my sole self

**Author's Note:**

> Written in deep admiration of tweedisgood's stories, whose brilliance I may never hope to achieve. English is not my native language. Should you have anything at all to say, please feel free to leave a comment.

It is a mild wistful evening in May when I find myself standing (well, lurking) by the hedgerow at South Downs in Sussex, a rustic cottage overgrown with fox grape looming like a mirage of shaded whiteness before me. It has been five years, too long, and yet now that I’m here it feels much too early. Five years since Holmes told me that retirement and bees were what he had envisaged for himself while we hunted criminals and the work was all that mattered. I don’t know that I believe it even now and I certainly did not believe it then, if it were not for the fact that one day I went to call on him in Baker Street and he wasn’t there, gone before I had a chance to say goodbye. It still feels a bit like a betrayal, but god knows what I imagined. I knew even then that goodbyes at train stations and waving handkerchiefs until all that sleek machinery vanishes round the bend were not his style.

 

He’s there, at the porch, smoking where I can see him. I made sure when I came to find the right spot to observe but not be seen. He hasn’t changed, not really, perhaps a bit more silver in his wild mane and, were it possible, an added gauntness to his frame. I have heard he has a housekeeper, like he did at Baker Street, but I don’t know that she nags him through the day to _Eat something, for god’s sake, Holmes_ often enough to see him, finally, grudgingly comply. But the eyes, their sharpness unmistakable even in the distance, are the same, a perennial testimony to his dauntless intelligence. He doesn’t know I’m here. I didn’t write to say I would come, and so far I have not made any sudden movement that would betray me.

 

There is a mystery for what Holmes dubbed my avid readers, a mystery I have long wished to have an answer to. Why did he never write, after he moved to the middle of nowhere to immerse himself in the secrets of nature different from those we’d solved together? He did reply to my letters, to be sure, but his answers were always so brief, cutting and impersonal that I started to wonder whether I had offended him somehow. My own missives, accordingly, grew scant until they stopped altogether. I must confess that a part of me hoped for him to pick up where I left off, but he never did. I knew he was well in health through his brother who, as usual, knew everything about everyone and had taken it upon himself to inform me that _Sherlock does very well indeed, he’s even composing one of his scientific monographs, I’m sure it will be a shining success like the one on nail growth after death_. Holmes even wrote to Lestrade a couple of times, to help where the best of Scotland Yard would surely have failed, so I know that whatever this was, it was personal.

 

I tried to ignore him then, for months which turned into years, just as he did me, now that I was apparently useless as a hanger-on in the thrill of the chase, perhaps he chose to cut me out of his existence. Perhaps leaving London behind meant leaving me there, too, and I should have just accepted it. But if Holmes believed that I would, he really didn’t know me at all.

 

And so here I am, the inevitable loser in this game of who shall wait it out longer. May is well known for bringing out longing in the young and the old, and when I found my mind being occupied by Holmes more than five times a day, I decided to put a stop to his childish hide-and-seek, as willful and incomprehensible as everything about him ever was. I took the smallest valise I could find in an attempt to persuade myself this was just a short social call, got on the first train to Sussex and walked from the station on a winding, dusty road, preparing the things (reproaches, affectionate jibes) I had to say to him. And yet when I got here, like a weary, much too long absent traveler, they had all gone out of my head like so much chaff.

 

Holmes. Somehow I had forgotten that air of untouchability, that self-imposed isolation and unbearable freedom he has always had, raised up like a wall to protect him from god knows what. From illogical, blundering mortals, from me. Should I open the gate hidden in the midst of that prickly hedgerow now? He would hear the hinges creak, would angle his head just a bit to the side and for a moment, there would be that hint of unexpected (delighted) surprise in his eyes, which even he would fail to mask. Would he smile then, say _Watson, my dear fellow, whatever brings you here?_ or would the coldness that permeated his letters seep out of his lean frame too?

 

I take a step forward and my foot scrapes on the gravel. Holmes turns his head, sharply, and scans the bushes in search of whoever has taken it upon himself to disturb his afternoon pipe. My heart beats in my chest like the wings of a captive bird and _Damn it all, when have you become a coward, Watson, afraid of your own best, dearest friend?_ But I’m still too well hidden and soon, he turns away and becomes lost in contemplation of the buzzing hives at the further end of his garden. Shall I then, or shan’t I? I have come all this way, after all, and what should I say at home when asked how I fared? Could I admit to the fear of the immediate, the fear of too many unspoken dreams?

 

Best take a deep breath. I am turning into a child in my old age after all and as I continue to watch him, I make a wager with myself, like I used to do as a young boy. If he turns my way again, I shall go in, if he finishes his pipe and disappears inside, I’ll turn round, walk back to the station and never look back. My imagination has served me this long, after all, and perhaps I might sweeten the journey back by fancying the slight smile on his lips and the warmth that finally, undeniably, reaches his cold eyes, the firm grip of his hand and a hint of a promise in his frame as he invites me in for tea and a trayfull of scones. Perhaps I can live off recollections rather than face the possibility that I have become a redundancy, like an old pair of shoes too weather-beaten to ever be worn again.

 

Five minutes more and the smoke ceases to curl upwards in meandering puffs. So then. He has not turned my way and it is time after all to wend backwards like so many memories. He turns to go back inside, perhaps to an unfinished experiment or a half-cold cup of coffee and I curl my fingers into the palms of my hands, nod minutely and

 

“John, whatever have you been doing in the bushes all this time? I thought I might have to go fetch you myself. Mind you, I don’t know how you think you can manage overnight with such a small case. I would have thought the years spent with me would have taught you something about using your brain.”

 

The hinges on the front gate truly creak abominably. I’ll have to oil them in the morning when the sun goes up. 


End file.
